Class is back in session for San Francisco Unified School District, and the new school year promises lots of change for the nearly 50,000 students and thousands more staffers headed back to campuses.
While a list of closing schools is no longer looming overhead, and leadership feels more stable without the flurry of major city elections, SFUSD is teed up for plenty of changes and growing pains.
Here’s what we’re watching heading into the fall.
To close a record-high budget deficit projected for the 2025–26 school year, SFUSD last spring laid off 109 members of its staff and offered early retirement packages to another 345 who agreed to leave their positions in June.
San Francisco’s school board approved much higher layoff projections in March, totalling more than 500 across school sites and the district’s administrative office, but was able to rescind most preliminary pink slips thanks to high participation in the voluntary buyout.
Even though the final layoff numbers ended up being relatively low, especially for student-facing positions, campuses are going to have noticeably fewer staff members this fall.
The district eliminated 400 positions in schools and across its administration, shifting many educators working in specialized roles, like curriculum development or reading support, into classroom positions vacated by buyout recipients.
Schools will operate this fall according to a new bare-bones staffing model, which guarantees a principal, classroom teachers, a clerk and custodial staff.
Other professionals, however, who families have grown accustomed to having around — like additional teachers who help keep class sizes small, or support English language learners — will only work in schools that have discretionary budgets available.
SFUSD has publicly shared a supplementary staffing guide explaining how those roles could be filled, but how much funding individual schools have, and what they’re using it for, will start coming into view in the first few weeks of the year.
It also remains to be seen how many classes will start the year without a permanent teacher.
The district did not provide data on how many teacher vacancies it had on Friday, but in May, principals indicated that they were falling behind in trying to fill the positions of those retiring or leaving the district.
The district is also introducing some pretty significant curriculum changes — both planned and unplanned.
This week, kindergarten through eighth-grade math classes will begin using new lesson plans focused on problem-based learning and real-world applications. Both Imagine Learning and Amplify Desmos Math lessons were piloted in some SFUSD elementary and middle schools, respectively, last year.
The new curriculum will cost the district a total of $11.6 million — to fund new textbooks, digital licenses and professional development over the next five years in elementary grades and one year in middle school classes, according to SFUSD’s adoption documents.
While the district has been working toward acquiring new math materials for multiple years, it also decided to make a last-minute change to another course curriculum: ninth-grade ethnic studies.
After parents and a national education organization with a record of efforts to curtail education about gender, race and sexual orientation in public schools expressed concerns with SFUSD’s longstanding Ethnic Studies curriculum, Superintendent Maria Su decided to swap it out for a more regulated curriculum used by other districts across the state.
She told school leaders and families in June that SFUSD would pause instruction of its homegrown curriculum, developed by educators over more than 15 years, to audit course materials. Throughout the 2025–26 school year, she said the district will work on a more regulated internal curriculum to bring to the school board for approval ahead of fall 2026.
As teachers returned to classrooms last week, some dealt with what has become a fairly typical point of tension in recent years: getting paid.
After two years and more than $30 million trying to make a payroll system operated by EMPower work, the district ditched it last year, shelling out even more money to purchase new software from companies Frontline and Red Rover to manage paychecks and employee benefits.
That program launched in July, but in its first few weeks, some educators are already experiencing familiar issues.
United Educators of San Francisco said some of its members’ dues haven’t been properly deducted from their summer paychecks, while other employees have reported being paid at the wrong rate or missing money for clocked vacation and sick days.
The district said that kinks are expected, and some of the issues are byproducts of the EMPower system, since a lot of data had to be transferred over from that software.
Marin Trujillo, SFUSD’s head of staff, assured board members last week that, unlike issues that arose in EMPower, he’s confident the district can identify and fix the root causes quickly.
While many of the problems SFUSD has been dealing with for years — long-term enrollment decline, funding shortfalls and teacher retention — persist, Su looks to be betting on new programs to draw in more students and resources.
SFUSD saw an uptick in interest for this fall, thanks to expanding transitional kindergarten offerings. Total applications were up 10%, led by families looking to enroll their 4-year-olds in district schools.
While Su and San Francisco’s Board of Education President Phil Kim have both left the door open to the possibility of school closures in the coming years, Su said in the spring that she’s most interested in transforming SFUSD sites for more TK classes and expanded special education offerings.
One such site might also become the home of a new kindergarten through eighth-grade Mandarin immersion school announced in July.
Su previously said the move follows years of growing interest in a new dual language program. Currently, SFUSD only has 66 seats across two kindergarten Mandarin immersion programs, more than half of which are reserved for Mandarin speakers.
But the announcement this summer also came as support grew for a parent-led effort to launch a charter school offering a similar program.
In June, leaders of the proposed Dragon Gate Academy, also a K–8 Mandarin immersion school, submitted a petition to the city’s school board asking for a charter to open next fall.
Last week, district staff urged the board to reject the proposal, citing educational and legal issues, and saying SFUSD “is not positioned to absorb the financial impact of the charter school.”
School districts have been generally wary of new charters, which can hurt their enrollment and siphon their per-pupil funding. The board will vote on the proposal Aug. 26.
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